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American gargoyles : Flannery O'Connor and the medieval grotesque

The same carnivalesque spirit exists in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. It, too exhibits what G.K. Chesterton called "the gaiety of Gothic"--Particularly in its gallery of bizarre regional characters. O'Connor's Southern grotesques are human gargoyles. Like their medieval counterparts, their repulsiveness and ludicrousness offend our conventional understanding of what is beautiful and proper. They challenge and undermine our prejudices about the will of God and what it means to be human. But as misshapen and deformed as they are, O'Connor's gargoyles are vessels of grace in her fiction. Their very monstrosity restores in us our appreciation for humanity's incorrigible vitality and diversity.

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  • "The same carnivalesque spirit exists in the fiction of Flannery O'Connor. It, too exhibits what G.K. Chesterton called "the gaiety of Gothic"--Particularly in its gallery of bizarre regional characters. O'Connor's Southern grotesques are human gargoyles. Like their medieval counterparts, their repulsiveness and ludicrousness offend our conventional understanding of what is beautiful and proper. They challenge and undermine our prejudices about the will of God and what it means to be human. But as misshapen and deformed as they are, O'Connor's gargoyles are vessels of grace in her fiction. Their very monstrosity restores in us our appreciation for humanity's incorrigible vitality and diversity."@en
  • "This dissertation compares the fiction of Flannery O'Connor to the folk art of the Middle Ages--to gargoyles, chimeras, miracle plays, fabliaux, woodcuts, and marginalia. Like Gothic art and architecture, Flannery O'Connor's work seems ugly and crude to those who judge it according to the classical-minded aesthetics of Modernism. But judged according to its own aesthetic, that of the medieval grotesque, it is beautiful and sophisticated. This study is an enthusiastic defense of the grotesque, of its aims and techniques, and draws much of its inspiration from Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World. According to Bakhtin, the "ugliness" of the medieval grotesque transgresses the boundaries of beauty to achieve a more complete picture of the world and our place in it. It is a dialectical art form, constantly negotiating between opposites and highlighting transitions, and it achieves its effects through degradation, deformity, and reversal. Through parody and mockery, shock and terror, it laughingly demolishes all the conventions and categories which alienate and oppress us."@en
  • "Focusing on the comic genius of Flannery O'Connor, Anthony Di Renzo reveals a dimension of her work that has been overlooked by both her supporters and her detractors, most of whom have concentrated exclusively on her use of theology and parable. Di Renzo compares the bizarre comedy in O'Connor's stories and novels to that of medieval narrative, art, folklore, and drama. Noting an especial kinship between her characters and the grotesqueries that adorn the margins of illuminated manuscripts and the facades of European cathedrals, he argues that O'Connor's Gothicism brings her tales closer in spirit to the English mystery cycles and the leering gargoyles of medieval architecture than to the Gothic fiction of Poe and Hawthorne with which critics have so often linked her work. For Di Renzo the grotesqueness of O'Connor's strange comedy is not a limitation but an accomplishment, deeply rooted in medieval art and satire. O'Connor's peculiar world, he insists, must be accepted on its own terms without consideration of whether it is "ugly." Like the monstrosities carved on the walls at the monastery of Clairvaux, which St. Bernard describes in a famous letter, O'Connor's characters - her rednecks and misfits, her selfish matrons and berserk evangelists - are "deformis formosita ac formosa deformitas," beautifully hideous, hideously beautiful. Relying partly on Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of Rabelais, Di Renzo examines the different forms of the grotesque in O'Connor's fiction and their parallels in medieval art, literature, and folklore. He begins by demonstrating that the figure of Christ is the ideal behind her satire - an ideal, however, that must be degraded as well as exalted if it is ever to be a living presence in the physical world. Di Renzo goes on to discuss O'Connor's unusual treatment of the human body and its relationship to medieval fabliaux. He depicts the interplay between the saintly and the demonic in her work, illustrating how for her good is just as grotesque as evil because it is still "something under construction." And finally he argues that apocalypse is the culmination of the grotesque in O'Connor's fiction; it is a renewal in destruction, a violent juxtaposition of death and rebirth. For Flannery O'Connor Judgment Day is a cosmic Mardi Gras."@en
  • "Focusing on the comic genius of Flannery O'Connor, Anthony Di Renzo reveals a dimension of her work that has been overlooked by both her supporters and her detractors, most of whom have concentrated exclusively on her use of theology and parable. Di Renzo compares the bizarre comedy in O'Connor's stories and novels to that of medieval narrative, art, folklore, and drama. Noting an especial kinship between her characters and the grotesqueries that adorn the margins of illuminated manuscripts and the facades of European cathedrals, he argues that O'Connor's Gothicism brings her tales closer in spirit to the English mystery cycles and the leering gargoyles of medieval architecture than to the Gothic fiction of Poe and Hawthorne with which critics have so often linked her work. For Di Renzo the grotesqueness of O'Connor's strange comedy is not a limitation but an accomplishment, deeply rooted in medieval art and satire. O'Connor's peculiar world, he insists, must be accepted on its own terms without consideration of whether it is "ugly." Like the monstrosities carved on the walls at the monastery of Clairvaux, which St. Bernard describes in a famous letter, O'Connor's characters - her rednecks and misfits, her selfish matrons and berserk evangelists - are "deformis formosita ac formosa deformitas," beautifully hideous, hideously beautiful. Relying partly on Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of Rabelais, Di Renzo examines the different forms of the grotesque in O'Connor's fiction and their parallels in medieval art, literature, and folklore. He begins by demonstrating that the figure of Christ is the ideal behind her satire - an ideal, however, that must be degraded as well as exalted if it is ever to be a living presence in the physical world. Di Renzo goes on to discuss O'Connor's unusual treatment of the human body and its relationship to medieval fabliaux. He depicts the interplay between the saintly and the demonic in her work, illustrating how for her good is just as grotesque as evil because it is still "something under construction." And finally he argues that apocalypse is the culmination of the grotesque in O'Connor's fiction; it is a renewal in destruction, a violent juxtaposition of death and rebirth. For Flannery O'Connor Judgment Day is a cosmic Mardi Gras."

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  • "Criticism, interpretation, etc"
  • "Criticism, interpretation, etc"@en
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Llibres electrònics"
  • "History"
  • "History"@en

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  • "American Gargoyles Flannery O'Connor and the Medieval Grotesque"
  • "American gargoyles : Flannery O'Connor and the medieval grotesque"@en
  • "American gargoyles : Flannery O'Connor and the medieval grotesque"
  • "American gargoyles: flannery o'connor and the medieval grotesque"@en
  • "American gargoyles Flannery O'Connor and the medieval grotesque"@en
  • "American gargoyles Flannery O'Connor and the medieval grotesque"
  • "American gargoyles : Flannery O'Connor and the Medieval grotesque"
  • "American Gargoyles : Flannery O'Connor and the Medieval Grotesque"

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